Indonesia must re-point 15,000 satellite dishes

PT Telkom of Indonesia suffered a satellite malfunction on August 25^th on its Telkom-1 satellite. It is not entirely clear whether there’s a problem with the Lockheed Martin-built satellite, launched in 1999, or some sort of operator error. However, PT Telkom is talking of making an insurance claim and thus seemingly accepting that the problem is not recoverable.

The Indonesian islands are home to more than 260 million people, and many get their TV from cable systems, while PT Telkom also operates its Pasifik Satelite Nusantara subsidiary.

PT Telkom says it has about 12,000 VSAT dishes looking at Telkom-1 (at 108 degrees East) and another 3,000 dishes for other communications. These 15,000 dishes will need to be repointed to Telkom-2 or Telkom-3S craft.

However, PT Telkom was in the process of either ‘selling’ or leasing part of its payload to Intelsat.

A Telkom-4 satellite, designed to back-up and replace Telkom-1, is being built by Space Systems/Loral and currently due for launch towards the end of 2018.